The present invention relates to a headlight system for vehicles, and more particularly to a self-adjustable headlight system for maintaining proper forward alignment of the headlights even when the vehicle is unevenly loaded in the front-to-read direction.
A current problem faced with most vehicles such as pickup trucks, which may carry heavy loads which are supported unevenly in the front to rear direction, is that, at night-time, the resultant positioning of the headlights may be such that they are improperly aligned in a vertical plane. For instance, if the load is at the rear of the vehicle, the lights may be oriented too high, so that they do not properly shine on the roadway surface but instead shine at the eye level of an oncoming driver who then faces blinding bright lights. Such a dangerous problem may be solved by not hauling loads in such trucks at night, or by resetting the headlights of the truck with a screw driver to lower their beam.
Of background interest is U.S. Pat. No. 2,270,458 of McAdoo issued Jan. 20, 1942, which describes and illustrates a dampened pendulum which is linked by a bar to headlights which are arranged to pivot about a horizontal axis. The pendulum swings the headlights to and holds them in an appropriate position when, for example, a vehicle travels up an inclined road. Canadian Pat. No. 180,029 of Colburn issued Oct. 30, 1917 describes and illustrates a somewhat similar construction of pendulum arrangement, linked by bars to a pair of headlights pivotable about a horizontal axis for swinging the vehicle headlights in a vertical plane to tilt the headlights when driving up or down hills. Another reference of general background interest is Canadian Pat. No. 245,739 of Redding issued Dec. 30, 1924, describing and illustrating a system of headlight pivotable about a vertical axis.